Righting Historical Wrongs

Written by Bohdan Kordan

Canadian Speeches: Issues of the Day
September 1993

On September 22, 1988, the Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney, prime minister of
Canada, rose in the House of Commons to issue an apology to Canadians of
Japanese origin for the wrongful internment of their community during the
Second World War. The prime minister stated in part on that occasion that
Canadians could not change history but as a nation must have the courage to
face the past. He spoke in imperatives, declaring an apology was necessary
"To put things right with the surviving members - with their children, and
ours so that they can walk together in this country, burdened by neither
the wrongs nor the grievances of previous generations."

These are noble and generous words of one who would see a future for
Canada where peoples would come together in harmony, trust, and with an
abiding respect for each other, their histories and cultures. More to the
point, however, the prime minister acknowledged that the nation's ability
to face the challenges of tomorrow and the moral choices we as a people
make today will in great measure depend on our preparedness to confront and
redress the mistakes of the past.

In these few well chosen words, the prime minister set before the nation
the practical importance of passing moral judgement on past injustices:
moral judgments have implications for actions, and, therefore, on the
current and future conduct of human affairs.

The utility in recognizing a historical wrong is in the meaning it shares
with other potentially unjust events. That we condemn a historical
injustice is to express a value which conditions our response to choices
that we currently face. It also reinforces a tradition which allows us to
avoid actions that would otherwise imperil our sense of identity and moral
worth. We as a nation must pass moral judgement on historical injustices
because it is in this particular way of understanding the past that we
become open to it and accept those very ideas and values we as a democratic
people profess and use in shaping the justness of our own actions.

But there are other imperatives that demand from us that we judge
historical wrongs. Historical references enable us to speak intelligently
about circumstances which may allow for real moral danger to manifest
itself and to recognize when the lives and dignity of a people are thus
threatened. The consequences of actions are not always clear until crime is
committed. The lessons of history as a result have a real place in the
current political dialogue in determining which actions are appropriate and
what principles must be upheld.

It is insufficient to claim that discussing past wrongs is pointless. That
we cannot change history is self-evident and unproductive. Moreover, it is
not the issue. The issue is to confront history and learn from it. The
importance of history is that it tells us something about who we are and
what we might become. In this sense, the tragedy for those who would
dismiss the lessons of history is not that the contempt they eschew is
somehow legitimized - history neither seeks, nor requires the approval or
blandishments of individuals. Rather it is the loss of both an opportunity
to discover ourselves and a means by which we may avoid repeating those
mistakes that would make of us something other than what we might become.

This is not to suggest that justice is prescriptive and the lessons of
history lead inevitably to a higher and nobler consciousness. Far from it.
The value of historical assessment is simply that it alerts those faced
with moral choices to the myriad of possibilities that history presents and
that actions and decisions must be weighed carefully.

This raises an important point. Our need to remember is intimately bound
with the contingency inherent in history. History is comprised of chance
events that from the perspective of probability are elusive and
indeterminable. History is complex, layered, and anarchic and only a
complete recollection of things past can assist our understanding of it.
Once a historical event is forgotten or concealed, damage is done to the
memory of the past.

The significance of this lies in that memory is not the residue of life
but the framework for our own identity as a nation, a community, and,
ultimately, we as individuals. Historical memory helps to sustain
communities and individuals by giving meaning to their existence in
history. The historical memory of a community is its identity. And if for
reasons of neglect, ignorance or malice a community's history is
trivialized or dismissed, this constitutes an assault on the identity of
those who would comprise it.

Individuals who seek the redress of historical wrongs do so not for venal
reasons or to teach the perpetrators and their heirs a lesson. They look to
justice because they must contend with the contingency in history to
preserve their identity. Indeed, any attempt to alter or deny history by
others takes away from the meaning of the experience which shapes identity,
and, tragically, in this case, places the individual, as the object of
historical injustice, in the role of subject. As the subject in history,
questions are raised about self-worth and the worth of the community to
which the individual belongs: that somehow the individual invited the
disaster or that it was something about the community which allowed
disaster to be visited upon it. This situation proves fortuitous for those
who, in the absence of living memory, would be free to create a more
palatable history.

Only historical remembrance and a complete account of the past allows us
to compare and distinguish between what has happened from that which is
offered in its place. It is through living memory alone that communities
and individuals are able to maintain their cultural and moral worth in a
world of conjecture and recrimination while dispelling arguments which
would rely on historical and moral relativism to lessen the meaning of
historical injustice.

It is true that no amount of compensation can serve as adequate
restitution for a historical injustice, especially one that has deprived
individuals of their basic human and civil rights. It is for this reason
that redress can only but be symbolic. But in its symbolism - to use the
prime minister's remarks in his address to the House of Commons - redress
must go beyond "laws and words." It must demonstrate society's undertaking
to acknowledge that an injustice has been committed. It must preserve the
integrity and dignity of a people's identity. And, finally, it must give
recognition to the fact that it was failed government which acted against
its own people; to emphasize that governments have a moral and political
responsibility, then as now, to ensure such events do not occur.

The settlement reached between the Government of Canada and the Japanese
Canadian community was successfully concluded because the apology was
unequivocal and the offer symbolically met the criteria of responsibility.
The offer was not taken or meant to be an act of contrition or atonement
because neither was being sought. The spiritual crisis and the material
losses suffered by Japanese Canadians is part of history and could never be
fully compensated or recovered. What was being sought was a sincere
expression of good faith: the recognition that an injustice had been
committed; the symbolic redress of a wrong so that the nation could move
forward; and the guarantee of legal safe-guards that would ensure these
events would never be repeated.

Today, the Government of Canada and the people of Canada are faced once
again with the challenge of learning from history. During World War I,
Canada conducted its first national internment operations against an ethnic
underclass on the pretext of national security. It was a policy choice.
However, it was the wrong moral choice. This judgement is not a matter of
historical hindsight. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, for one, broke at the time with
the Union government because he recognized the character of the actions of
that government to be fundamentally unjust.

When the Government of Canada under the War Measures Act designated some
80,000 Ukrainian Canadians as "enemy aliens" on the basis of their status
as former subjects of states then at war with Canada and suspended their
right to naturalization, it did so in violation of international legal
custom. That the government of Canada interned some 5,000 "enemy alien"
Ukrainian Canadians, many of whom were detained for economic reasons, and
treated them once in detention as "prisoners of war," it did so by
obviating its international legal commitments. When the same "prisoners of
war" were subject to unnecessarily harsh and brutal treatment and whose
labors were crudely used to profit agencies of the government, notably the
ministry tasked with the development of the Dominion's national parks, the
Government of Canada failed to observe the basics of international
humanitarian law.

This is all part of the historical record of failure. Whether Canadians,
today, are prepared to face this past is uncertain. It is especially
uncertain when a minister of the Crown agrees with the recommendations of
his advisory body which, in considering a proposal to acknowledge
internment as part of Parks Canada's interpretive program, dismisses the
event as being without historical significance. It is further disturbing
that the minister would approve a measure which violates the letter and
spirit of the 1930 National Parks Act, legislation which instructs the
ministry responsible that Canada's national parks are for the benefit and
education of all Canadians. What more purposeful benefit and what better
way to educate Canadians of their civic responsibility than to alert those
who would otherwise travel untroubled on the roads of Canada's national
parks where once an unspeakable crime was committed.

It is unclear whether the government of the day will be able to overcome
the miasma and confusion surrounding the issue of acknowledgement and
redress. It is not promising when a motion before the House, unanimously
approved by all parties, calling for genuine acknowledgement and
negotiations, is consciously and unceremoniously ignored. That it is
ignored is unsurprising when the appeals of those who would argue for
respectful recognition of their identity and for symbolic justice to be
done to the memory of the innocents are contemptuously dismissed by a
government member as "voices from the Dark Ages." It is, finally, unclear
to what degree the government is committed to the process of
acknowledgement and redress when officials refuse to entertain even the
possibility that the funds of internees entrusted to its keep and never
returned should now be withheld.

The imperatives that demanded we learn from the Japanese Canadian
experience are no less pressing in this case. And the imperatives which
forced the government of the day to examine its obligations and
responsibility to the present and the future are no less compelling. The
liberal democratic precepts which give design to the Canadian polity
underscore the importance that rule of law and human and civil rights have
for the political culture of the nation. The experience of Canada's first
national internment operations and the events surrounding the experience
serves as another reminder of the fragile nature upon which the political
foundations of this country rests. History provides the lessons by which
the mistakes of the past would less likely be repeated. The importance of
this should not be lost on those who would lead the country and will face,
as did their predecessors, difficult moral and political choices.

A major challenge is presented by the issue of acknowledgement and
redress. The real significance of the challenge lies not in its
implications for the future of the community but in the larger meaning of
how the Canadian nation and its government are prepared to treat the issue.
What has been done is done. The experience of internment has long since
been integrated in the collective memory and identity of the community.
That the experience may be dismissed or trivialized is unfortunate and
serves only to burden a community unnecessarily. Nothing however, will
detract from the essential meaning of that experience.

And yet within this tragedy rests an opportunity. It will be a true
measure of the political maturity of the Canadian people and an
uncompromising expression of solidarity with the future if they are able to
overcome their prejudices and fears on the road to discovering what they
might yet become. In this, Ukrainian Canadians have a shared
responsibility. Their special task is to assist the Canadian nation
towards realizing that end.